The Orioles will only have two lefties in their bullpen for the American League Division Series that starts tonight at 5:37 p.m. against the Detroit Tigers, and Ubaldo Jimenez is a surprise addition to the roster.
The Tigers don’t have many left-...

An announced sellout crowd formed a sea of orange throughout the seating bowl of Camden Yards -- waving orange rally towels that said “Welcome to October” -- ready for the return of postseason baseball to Baltimore.
After nearly two weeks of...

A day after the Detroit Tigers bullpen imploded in Game 1, the same cast of relievers was again responsible for an eighth-inning meltdown that sent the Orioles on the road with a 7-6 win and a 2-0 lead in the American League Division Series.
"It's...

BALTIMORE -- There's something about playing the Detroit Tigers in the postseason that just seems to makes Nelson Cruz lock in at the plate.
Cruz homered six times vs. the Tigers in 2011 while playing with the Texas Rangers. He did some more damage with...

A five-run offensive explosion in the ninth inning Saturday that made a nail-biter out of a blowout didn’t mask the most pertinent question surrounding the 2014 Orioles:
Will the starting pitching do enough to keep them in contention throughout the summer months?
Five games in — through one turn of the rotation — the answer isn’t promising.
“We are better than we’ve shown. We know what kind of five-man staff we have and we are going to build off each other and go,&...

It’s not how you score runs, just that you score more than the other guy. Wild pitches, bases-loaded walks, bunts, bloopers, sacrifice flies, stumbling outfielders -- whatever works.
Tuesday night the Dodgers edged the Detroit Tigers, 3-2, scoring their second run on a shallow sacrifice fly and -- after Detroit tied it against Kenley Jansen with two outs in the ninth inning -- winning it in the 10th when Carl Crawford was credited with a generous double to score Chone Figgins. That occurred...

Alex Avila drove a first-pitch slider off the right field wall in the bottom of the ninth inning Thursday to give the Detroit Tigers a 3-2 win over the New York Yankees.
Avila's two-out blast off Shawn Kelley hit midway up the wall and out of the reach of Ichiro Suzuki, who had to race back into the shadows to track the ball.
Yankees manager Joe Girardi said he couldn't tell if the ball was catchable or not.
"I heard him hit the wall and I heard the ball hit the wall," Girardi said. "The bottom line...

Although he is 22 and had been in the majors for all of 11 days, Orioles right-hander Kevin Gausman didn’t seem flummoxed by the bright lights and suffocating hype of his first two starts.
He just wasn’t very effective.
All that changed Sunday in what was Gausman’s biggest test yet, his big league home debut on a typically sticky Baltimore afternoon against the Detroit Tigers, the best hitting club in baseball.
Gausman wasn’t involved in the decision, but he lasted six strong...

Entering Sunday’s series finale with Detroit, the Orioles bench had struggled throughout the year in contributing late in games, hitting just 1-for-18 in pinch-hit situations.
But against the Tigers, the Orioles got their first pinch hit since May 20 when Danny Valencia knocked in the tying run on a single to right field off Tigers reliever Phil Coke in the seventh inning.
“I knew he had good stuff,” Valencia said. “I actually saw both of his pitches. He threw me a fastball...

The field for this fall's playoffs might be far different if Josh Byrnes, then the Diamondbacks general manager, hadn't approached the Yankees' Brian Cashman with an idea shortly before Thanksgiving in 2009.
What transpired next may have contributed to Byrnes' firing eight months later. And it no doubt cost Cashman some sleepless nights the next summer.
But the three-team, seven-player trade consummated a month later with the Tigers changed the fortunes of two franchises and set up outfielder Curtis...